No-nonsense Judge Steers Cruz Re-trial

Mehling's Approach Is Hands-on In Court

After testifying about a man he saw near the spot where Jeanine Nicarico's body was found in 1983, tollway worker Frank Kochanny shifted in his chair, preparing to leave.

That's when DuPage County Circuit Judge Ronald Mehling, who alone will decide whether Rolando Cruz is guilty in the abduction and murder of the 10-year-old girl, paused from his almost constant note-taking and looked down from the bench. The lawyers had finished, but he had some questions of his own.

"Do you see the man in this courtroom that you saw in the car on that day?" Mehling asked.

The courtroom fell silent for several seconds as Kochanny, 45, stared at Cruz, who remained motionless.

"One hundred percent-I cannot say yes," Kochanny finally said.

"I have no further questions," Mehling said, and Kochanny left the room. Defense attorney Thomas Breen, seated next to Cruz, turned to his files and appeared to let out a long breath.

In the opening week of Cruz's third trial for Nicarico's murder, Mehling has injected himself into the questioning of several witnesses, signaling that he intends to hear as much evidence as possible before reaching a verdict.

Mehling has at times let the lawyers go beyond the bounds they would be restricted to in a jury trial.

Mehling, a judge known in the Wheaton courthouse as efficient and unpretentious, has found himself at the center of the 12-year-old legal saga virtually by default. The Cruz case came to his courtroom after almost all the other felony judges in the county turned out to have been connected with it as lawyers, an indication of this trial's deep roots in the courthouse.

A judge since 1985, Mehling, 53, of Warrenville, began his law career 29 years ago in Wheaton. He quietly has earned a reputation as a jurist who gives defendants a particularly fair shake.

Relaxed on the bench, he sometimes chews gum as he hears the case.

But he is running the trial with a firm hand. Ten-minute recesses were just that. And a 9 a.m. start time meant Mehling, unlike many judges, was walking into the courtroom to the announcement of Deputy David Hamm within a minute or two of the appointed time.

He has been active in GOP politics, which might lead some to believe he would be easy on the office of the Republican prosecutor. But he also is a former public defender, which might lead some to believe he will be sympathetic to the defense.

"I think he is an extremely good person who tries to do the right thing," said one attorney who has been practicing law since 1978, primarily in DuPage. "That doesn't always mean that he's going to do what the state's attorney wants. He does, in fact, presume the defendant to be innocent.

"You've got some judges out here who can't say `not' and `guilty' in the same breath. Mehling does have a pretty broad definition of reasonable doubt, and I think that'll help Cruz."

"He's oriented toward getting things done," said Glen Ellyn lawyer Paul Kalinich, a former law partner of Mehling. "He's not power-oriented. He doesn't necessarily want to be loved by everybody. He's the kind of guy who likes to accomplish things."

Mehling has told the attorneys in the Cruz case that he will give both sides wide latitude in eliciting testimony that might be otherwise prohibited in a jury trial.

In one instance, Mehling overruled a prosecution objection to attempts by defense attorney Matthew Kennelly to probe the prior statements of a witness, saying, "All of these statements not only have to be gone into but all of the facts surrounding this statement."

What he lacks in flamboyance, Mehling makes up in firmness. In the first week of trial, prosecutors John Kinsella, Chris Wheaton and Robert Huiner frequently were left with sheepish looks when they voiced objections only to withdraw them after Mehling simply glanced up and asked, "And the basis?"

Cruz, 32, is on trial for the third time because his first two convictions were overturned by appeals courts, which cited judicial trial error.

With plenty of hindsight to guide him, Mehling may well avert another reversal, though there is never a guarantee.

His decisions have been upheld at a rate considered above average, and he has received high ratings in periodic polls conducted by the DuPage Bar Association. A listing of published decisions made by the Illinois Appellate and Supreme Courts on cases appealed from Mehling's courtroom showed that 13 of 46 appeals yielded rulings that entirely or partially overturned Mehling's decisions.

And though the Cruz case may well be the most sensational to reach his bench, Mehling has presided over a handful of prominent cases, including the 1994 murder conviction of Ronald Alvine, a habitual criminal who ran down and killed West Chicago Police Officer Michael Browning while trying to steal a sports car from a car dealership. He imposed the death penalty on Alvine in September 1994.